Tag Archives: Mills College

When Ted Lamb and his Stanford classmates visited Rosottis’ in the early 1950s, he says it was “wild country” out here. There wasn’t even a road leading up the hills across the road. After a stint in his family’s business, he returned in 1960 to find big changes in the area. Alpine Road had been realigned a bit, with part of a hillside cut away to accommodate the changes. And Alpine Hills had a road. He and his wife Jean bought land a house near the “Stanford Triangle,” that steep, wooded land extending, even today, between Westridge and the northern arc of the Golden Oak semi-circle.

Jean and Ted Lamb, April 3, 2014

Eight or nine or ten neighborhood kids would hike through the wilderness to get there to play—building hideouts, having “shoot-outs” and all kinds of fun. Working for the real estate firm of Cornish and Carey, in the early 1960s he learned of an offer by Mills College in Oakland to buy land behind Rosottis’ to relocate their campus. The deal fell through amidst valley plans for incorporation. Because of so many various proposals for development, without incorporation, “It would have been a disaster,” he says.